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Yes, for example the SRSR series is designed for cabinets and wall cavities with no rear access; the entire rack slides out on rails and then rotates so you can get to the back of the gear. The actual equipment mounting rails in terms of screws and hole spacing are the same as any other standard rack. They have a couple of other, similar model lines depending on the size, weight, and access requirements.

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I have a guy trying to sell me a MRK4431 for $500. Is that a good deal

A quick survey of online retailers suggests that that's a good price. One thing to bear in mind: that model is around 7 feet tall, over 31 inches deep, and floor-standing. Just be sure it fits with your room design/layout, and since it's apparently fully-welded you also need to be sure it will fit through the doors/hallways/stairwells to get to wherever you want to install it. BTW if room access is a problem, there are rack makers that use a bolt-together design that can be assembled in-place.

Basic custom built AV rack.
I used Home Depot 1" x 24" x 48" board's (cut in half) and adj shelf sides.
Pretty cheap, $20/board, $80 total, maybe $20 for the hardware. $100 total so far, with $30-$40 more I'll have 3 sliding shelfs, works for me.

Yea, my AV is a little deeper than most, but I had the room so why not.
Workability/access is very easy.

From HT side, this is on the front/RH side of the HT:
I am going to make sliding drawers for the bottom for storage.

Backside is open/accessable from rec room side, I will make doors for this soon...
Wires are semi-organized, until I'm sure that I like where things are I'm not too concerned about style points.
Soon on the rec/room side there will be cabinets/sink next to the AV backide, you can see the rough plumbing pipe for that.

A 37U Middle Atlantic Slim-5 - 26" deep, and brushed black aluminum custom faceplates / filler panels. Added two sets of 18U rack rails inset about 7" (upper half) and 10" (lower hald) that I did a little mod on to mount to the existing frame to save a few $$ and not have to pull the rack back out to add these. Used some Middle Atlantic lacing bars (straight & 6" offsets) along with the extra set of rack rails to keep everything tidy (or best I could). I custom terminated everything except for the HDMI & ToS cables.

In a state of "semi-completeness" - waiting for Santa to bring the Xbox 360, making up my mind on a media streamer (Popcorn Hour?? - PM me with any suggestions?), probably another DirecTV HD Receiver, I'll eventually move a Wii into the rack and may mount a modified iPod rack mount from Raxxess (if I can get a Denon iPod doc into the mount), and to put the MA side trim strips on.

Does anyone know how or where to buy vertical lace strips for the Middle Atlantic racks? The on-line stores only sell the 'dealer' packs which contain 6 vertical lace bars. Of course, I only have a single rack so two is all I need.

I am specifically looking for something like the LACE-37-OP. I could use the 40 or 44 as the bars are able to be cut down to size.

Looks like markertek has them but they come in packs of six. I was looking at these but I just decided to go with a couple sets of the front to back lacer bars (LBFR-5A-20) and one set of the horizontal lacer bars (LBH-1930-T) to attach to them. This will give me attachment points to run bundles of cable down the side of the rack as well as strain releif for feeding my patch panels on the back of the rack and components on the front.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a rack to mount in the middle of a wall? It doesn't need to be a floor standing model but would frame around it. I first was looking at this one (http://cableorganizer.com/computer-c...k.htm#features) but it mounts in the back which I could build a frame for it to support the back and the bottom but then want the MA custom faces, can you mix and match brands? or is there a better option.

It is a new construction wall with access to the back so I will access the equipment from the back and use custom faceplates for the front. It has to have space for a PS3, Denon reciver, Cable box, but would like to have some sports for expansion. I looked at the Middle Atlantic site but am not sure which model would suit my needs.

Here are the two racks I have had....the three panel one (with green walls) has been built by neighbor contractor for our new house (it is a room behind my media room leading to a bathroom - turned the closet into a built-in) where we moved to a year ago, the two panel one with the "red" walls is one from our older house that my b-in-law had built.

Looks like markertek has them but they come in packs of six. I was looking at these but I just decided to go with a couple sets of the front to back lacer bars (LBFR-5A-20) and one set of the horizontal lacer bars (LBH-1930-T) to attach to them. This will give me attachment points to run bundles of cable down the side of the rack as well as strain releif for feeding my patch panels on the back of the rack and components on the front.

Do these "front to back" lacer bars attach from the inside of the rack, or do you have to have access to the "outside" of the rack-rails? I've already got my rack mounted in the wall and getting access to the outside of the front rail pair would be a real pain (I'd basically have to remove everything, unbolt it and pull it out - I have full access to the back, so if these can be secured from the inside of the rack then it would be perfect for what I need right now for cable mounting...

Does anyone have any suggestions for a rack to mount in the middle of a wall? It doesn't need to be a floor standing model but would frame around it. I first was looking at this one (http://cableorganizer.com/computer-c...k.htm#features) but it mounts in the back which I could build a frame for it to support the back and the bottom but then want the MA custom faces, can you mix and match brands? or is there a better option.
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You have a couple of options - the simplest of which may just be getting rack-rail and securing these to studs spaced the appropriate width apart - if you need rear rails for cable management or other mounting then you'd need to do something there.... that might lead you to getting a SLIM-5 rack from Middle Atlantic and building a base to sit it on - this is esentially what I did (although the base is only about 8 inches tall - see my rack pic a handful of post above this one)

I was reading somewhere that when wiring for home theater you need to keep your low-voltage wiring (speaker, video Cat5) at least 12 inches away from high voltage 115V wiring due to EMI. Did most of you try to do this on your installs? Is this extremely critical or is it just something for audiophile purists and is only going to make a negligible difference?

I was reading somewhere that when wiring for home theater you need to keep your low-voltage wiring (speaker, video Cat5) at least 12 inches away from high voltage 115V wiring due to EMI. Did most of you try to do this on your installs? Is this extremely critical or is it just something for audiophile purists and is only going to make a negligible difference?.

You certainly do not want any extended parallel runs of the low-voltage and power wires as it is possible to pick up some inductive "hum". Best practices have your low voltage and high voltage cross at right angles to one another.

Of course, there is best practice and what you can accomplish in your real-world scenario given the constraints you have to work with - just try and keep seperation where possible and minimize any close parallel runs (I'd not want to run power and low-voltage together in a bundle down the length of a 20U - 30U rack - but then again power typicall comes out on the right side (looking from the back) of most components and you can route your signal cables to the left side.....)

Does anyone have any suggestions for a rack to mount in the middle of a wall? It doesn't need to be a floor standing model but would frame around it. I first was looking at this one (http://cableorganizer.com/computer-c...k.htm#features) but it mounts in the back which I could build a frame for it to support the back and the bottom but then want the MA custom faces, can you mix and match brands? or is there a better option.

It is a new construction wall with access to the back so I will access the equipment from the back and use custom faceplates for the front. It has to have space for a PS3, Denon reciver, Cable box, but would like to have some sports for expansion. I looked at the Middle Atlantic site but am not sure which model would suit my needs.

I used a middle atlantic rk20 for something like you describe and have been very happy.

just try and keep seperation where possible and minimize any close parallel runs (I'd not want to run power and low-voltage together in a bundle down the length of a 20U - 30U rack - but then again power typicall comes out on the right side (looking from the back) of most components and you can route your signal cables to the left side.....)

This is kind of why I am concerned about this. My rack is next to a wall that has power in it on the left side. I can try to run the signal down the right but routing the power cables across to the left side might be a pain. I wonder if putting some metal screen or aluminum foil on the sheetrock would block any EMI that is coming from the power lines in the wall.

Yep... they sure are Triads... the ones over the seating area are the Triad InWall Silver/4 Surrounds (dipoles). The two on either side of the projector are the Triad InCeiling Gold/6 Omnis. This setup was recommended by Paul Scarpelli of Triad and it worked out real nice!